


And Carry On

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Canon-Typical Violence, Dystopia, F/F, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 01:39:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6264508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanaya helps her Empress through the aftermath of an attempted assassination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Carry On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oriflamme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/gifts).



Kanaya stalked through the corridors of Battleship Retribution, her lime-and-black coat billowing dramatically behind her as she fumed over the obvious power play that had diverted her to the bridge to make and receive needless reports rather than letting her go straight to her moirail upon her return from her latest off-ship mission. Even the obvious unease the new captain showed in her presence, particularly when she deliberately intensified the glow of her skin until several nearby technicians had to blink away reflexive tears, didn't satisfy her.

She was the Serenesce's Hand, who spoke with the Serenesce's Voice. Nobody on the ship had any _right_ to yank her around, particularly not by invoking her own concern for Feferi.

Perhaps it was time to weed the officer corps again.

She slowed as she passed the last bulkhead doors that led into the imperial quarters (which were ridiculously ostentatious, but there was only so much that retrofitting could do to change the Condesce's aesthetics, not to mention there was a certain propaganda value to their extravagance). There ought to be a pair of guards standing watch in front of the airlock into Feferi's private suite, their gold-plated ceremonial armor splintering the light that reflected off the gleaming obsidian walls.

Instead, the hallway was deserted and the airlock door stood half-open. A breath of warm, salt-tinged air curled down the short corridor.

Yes, Kanaya thought, her glow quenched out in a heartbeat. Definitely time to weed the officer corps.

She drew her chainsaw and cradled it between her hands, finger resting on the power switch, blade canted up and forward at a slight angle. She approached the open door warily and plastered herself to the wall beside the airlock frame.

"Your Serene Retribution?" she called in a low voice. "Do you need backup?"

"It's only me, Kanaya," Feferi said, her voice drained and flat the way it all too often was these nights. "Drop the titles and come in. Shorey aboat the mess."

Kanaya stepped into Feferi's receiving block without re-holstering her chainsaw.

There was rather less slaughter than she'd expected -- merely a single corpse lying half in and half out of the jewel-studded lagoon. Indigo-purple blood still swirled sluggishly from the trident wounds in its torso, staining the shreds of its gray uniform jacket and making the water filtration system wheeze noisily as it sucked up the contaminants.

Kanaya licked her lips and told herself she wasn't hungry.

"She had your passcode, a copy of your fingerprints, and a syringe of your blood for the gene scanner. We need another layer of precautions," Feferi said from where she sat on the gold-plated rim of the artificial tide pool, arms wrapped around her knees and toes just skimming the surface of the water. Her hair spread thick and tangled around her like a cloak, and she wore very little underneath: certainly no armor or regalia. She should have looked soft. Vulnerable.

Kanaya knew better.

"I'm not certain there _is_ another layer of security, but we all know technology isn't my strong point," Kanaya said as she swung the airlock shut and threw the lever for the deadbolts. "In any case, I believe the more pressing issue is that the guards who should be outside your door are missing, and the minute I stepped out of my shuttle, I was diverted to the bridge to receive hard copies of the latest uniform redesign evaluations. There was no reason for that except to allow the laughsassin to impersonate me."

Feferi scowled and kicked at the corpse with one bare foot. Its ribs caved in under the blow and more blood spilled, wastefully, into the water.

"That might also explain why nobody answered my call for a waste removal team. There's no wave to tell how high the conspiracy went. I'll have to replaice the whole crew again."

That seemed somewhat excessive, but Kanaya supposed she had no room to criticize, considering the results of some of her own corruption investigations over the sweeps. "That is your prerogative," she said.

"My prerogative? Ha." Feferi unfolded one arm from under her hair and beckoned Kanaya to approach. "I have every prerogative in the universe and none of them do me any glubbing good unless I use them exactly the wave the Condesce did."

Kanaya hummed noncommittally as she slid her chainsaw back into its holster, unbuckled the belt and harness, and set the whole apparatus on the weapon rack just inside the door. Then she pulled off her boots (lovely things, both the insect-wing design burned into the polished leather, and the steel reinforcement in the toes and heels) and set them carefully beside her chainsaw. Her coat followed, unbuttoned and hung neatly on the terribly gaudy golden coatrack. She left the trousers and shirt alone, though the inevitable saltwater stains would be a tedious chore to remove once she retired to her own modest suite toward the stern of the ship.

Thus unburdened, she sat between Feferi and the corpse and wrapped her arm around her moirail. The razor-wire tension between her shoulders began to ebb at the touch of Feferi's skin, the scent of salt-damp hair and fresh claw-polish, the faint sound of her pulse as tyrian blood rushed through arteries and veins.

"The more we learn about the Empire's hidden strings, the more I wonder how much of your predecessor's power was an illusion built on bluffs and habit," she said. "And whether we could use some of her tools to construct our own illusion."

Feferi laughed, harsh and sharp in the back of her throat. "Her tools. What a polite wave to say I shoald try a little mass-murder instead of sticking to self-defense and acshoal enforcement of the current laws."

There was a faintly off-key note in her voice, like a bank of clouds glimpsed dimly on the horizon, past a stretch of calm and sunny ocean.

"I was thinking more along the lines of psychological warfare," Kanaya said, but Feferi talked right over her: the clouds beginning to boil and darken into storms.

"Maybe that's not such a bad idea. After all, nofin else works! Twelve sweeps and they still won't listen. Every order I give gets ignored or countermanded, the corruption we sweep out of one sector just washes over to the next, and more and more of the admirals are starting to think they don't need a pretty pink figurehead to legitimize their own fiefs. Twelve sweeps since they _murdered_ all our friends, and what does it matter if we krilled the ones reefsponsible when we haven't done a thing to change the Empire so that kind of crime can't happen again? I shoald just let Gl'bgolyb scream and--"

Kanaya papped her Empress firmly between the eyebrows. "Shoosh."

Feferi snapped at her fingers, sharp teeth missing flesh by millimeters.

"Shoosh," Kanaya repeated, stroking one hand along Feferi's brows and pressing the other up against the warm skin of her ribcage. She kept up the stream of soothing syllables and touches even as Feferi's own arm tightened to the point that Kanaya's own ribs creaked.

(She couldn't exactly get _more_ dead, after all.)

Eventually Feferi's grip eased and she leaned her forehead against Kanaya's shoulder, the tips of her horns sliding neatly to either side of Kanaya's neck. "Ugh. Shorey. I just get so frustrated sometimes, and it makes me a little crazy."

"I think it would be a little crazy not to get frustrated," Kanaya said. "The Empire wasn't built in a night, or by a single troll. Dismantling it obviously isn't any simpler. But we are making progress. For instance, this time I was able to reach you without having to battle my way off the bridge, and this set of conspirators had to settle for somehow removing your guards rather than persuading them to join the attack."

"Ugh," Feferi said again. "I shoald probably make sure they haven't been krilled as potential witnesses or informants. Sitting here only gives the conchspirators time to clean up after themshellves."

She raised her head and pressed a fleeting kiss to Kanaya's jaw before levering herself to her feet. "You're right. We can fix this. But right now I need to make myshellf look impressive and like none of this touched me at all, and you need to stop worrying. Come help me decide what to wear."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry about implicitly killing so many characters. Unfortunately, the only scenarios I could think of in which Kanaya was the _only_ person to whom Feferi could show weakness involved getting rid of all their other friends, because Feferi doesn't strike me as the kind of person who'd hide so much of herself from them, and if she tried, I am pretty sure Kanaya (as a responsible moirail) would tell her to cut that out. So I removed all their other support systems. :(


End file.
